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In a July 14 meeting, Jenison, one official who wasn't going to stand for any regulatory sleight-of-hand, told DeBarba and Kacich that if Northeast tried to resolve its licensing problems through internal paperwork alone, he would oppose it. Northeast had to get a license amendment approved before it could off-load another full core, and time was running out. DeBarba and Kacich called on Galatis and Betancourt to help them write the amendment request. The plan included, for the first time, the cooling-system improvements Galatis had been demanding for three years. It was a kind of victory, but he felt disgusted. "The organizational ethics were appalling," he says. "There's no reason I should have had to hire a lawyer and spend years taking care of something this simple."
So Galatis helped Kacich with the amendment request, which was filed July 28. Then he and Hadley drew up another document: a petition that asked the NRC to deny Northeast's amendment request and suspend Millstone's license for 60 days. The petition, filed on behalf of Galatis and We the People, charged that Northeast had "knowingly, willingly, and flagrantly" violated Millstone 1's license for 20 years, that it had made "material false statements" to the NRC and that it would, if not punished, continue to operate unsafely.
On Aug. 1, Betancourt was called into DeBarba's office; Roncaioli was present, and DeBarba told Betancourt he was being reassigned. "We want to help you, George," Betancourt recalls DeBarba saying, "but you've got to start thinking 'company.'" It was all very vague and, Betancourt thought, very intimidating. On Aug. 3--the day Betancourt was scheduled to meet with the Office of Investigations--Roncaioli called him to her office again. According to Betancourt, she said she wanted to "reaffirm the meaning" of the DeBarba meeting. Betancourt's wife and children began to be worried that he would be fired. "Why don't you just do what they want you to?" his eldest girl asked. Betancourt didn't know quite how to answer. "Your own daughter telling you to roll over," he says.
AFTER GALATIS FILED HIS PETITION, ON AUG. 21, he found himself in many of New England's newspapers. As citizens' groups called meetings, Northeast and the NRC assured everyone that the full-core off-load was a common practice that enhanced safety for maintenance workers inside the empty reactor vessel. "We've been aware of how they off-loaded the full core," NRC spokeswoman Diane Screnci told one paper. "We could have stopped them earlier."
At a citizens' group meeting, Galatis met a mechanic named Pete Reynolds, who had left Millstone in a labor dispute two years before. Reynolds shared some hair-raising stories about his days off-loading fuel. He told Galatis--and has since repeated the account to TIME--that he saw work crews racing to see who could move fuel rods the fastest. The competition, he said, tripped radiation alarms and overheated the fuel pool. Reynolds' job was to remove the big bolts that hold the reactor head in place. Sometimes, he said, he was told to remove them so soon after shutdown that the heat melted his protective plastic booties.